MiSeRy departs from OpTic, Saksa joins as stand-in

OpTic Gaming's entry into Dota 2was one of the biggest stories this year. Less than two months into the team's formation, however, Rasmus "MiSeRy" Filipsen is moving on.

After Ludwig "zai" Wahlberg and Peter "ppd" Dager's respective departures from Evil Geniuses, the stack they formed with Per Olsson "Pajkatt" Lille, Quinn "CC&C" Callahan, and MiSeRy was picked up by OpTic as its first Dota 2 squad in September.

MiSeRy's departure was confirmed by OpTic through a blog post on their official website yesterday, where they also mentioned that Martin "Saksa" Sazdov would be replacing MiSeRy as a temporary stand-in.

The news comes as somewhat of a surprise, considering that OpTic took first place in the American division of MoonduckTV's Midas Mode tournament. They also qualified for the $235,000 ROG Masters tournament taking place in Malaysia next week, with MiSeRy still in the roster.

It's possible that MiSeRy had personal reasons for leaving, but his reason was not disclosed in the announcement posted by OpTic. It was, however, cleared up somewhat by ppd through statements he made on his Twitch stream.

"MiSeRy was not kicked; he just didn't want to play anymore," said ppd. "He's on to new things, and so are we."

On the other hand, this is Saksa's first team after leaving the now-defunct MidOrFeed at the end of September. This means that he will be playing for the team at the ROG Masters and The Summit 8 in Los Angeles, to which the team was directly invited.

At the time of writing, MiSeRy's new team has yet to be announced—although rumors are circulating on social media that he and Aliwi "w33" Omar will be reuniting to form their own squad. These rumors were presumably sparked by w33 tweeting out a photo of MiSeRy earlier today.

MiSeRy and w33 played together under Digital Chaos, where they reached the grand finals of The International 6. After leaving DC, the TI6 roster went on to become Thunderbirds, then Planet Odd before their dissolution in August.